This site has needed an update for a long time. The last time I published a new professional portfolio was two years ago when I graduated from Rutger’s University Coding Bootcamp. I didn’t have even have a regular full-time developer position yet. I was still hopeful, dreaming, a little naïve, yet expecting great things. I was ready to go to work and code hard! But that site did little more than highlight some of my work, projects that were good but not production quality. The page was overcoded - a single page with five sections but templated via handlebars.js (I should have been serving a single html file... 
) I had plans on creating a mongodb backed blog, and for two years, you would find in the footer of my site Blog Coming Soon. 
“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” - Disputed Authorship
Gatsby to the Rescue! – My New Site
Once taking a full-time position, especially when you have a family full of children, time is of premium value. I just never had a need or desire to update my portfolio online. I figured if recruiters wanted to head-hunt me from my current job, they need to come with a good monetary offer, good benefits and companies will have to go off content I have produced. So Why Update My Site Now? Am I looking for new work? Yes, and No.
I’m not actively seeking new employment, but I am looking for solutions for upcoming projects at work, but more importantly, I’m looking to give my side-business a boost by offering niche services. There is a market for helping small businesses get a site up and running on Wordpress, Squarespace, even Wix, but **I want to produce sites I like to build as well as sites optimized for the web of the future - speedy, SEO optimized, accessible, and PWA friendly.
I started seeing devs I know tweeting about Gatsby so I checked it out and fell immediately in love. I have downloaded and configured a dozen or so starters, and I have started making open-source contributions to the Gatsby repo on Github, but it is time to put something into prod, and refactoring my portfolio and adding a blog seemed like the perfect first candidate. Hit me up on twitter with feedback on the new site
My Plan For This Blog – Or Why You Should Come Back
After this introductory post, I plan to post on the following:
- Technical Post on How I Built This Site
- Series of Technical Posts on Coding Practices I&rsquove Learned During My First Two Years of Professional Development
- Series of Posts Giving Specific Details and Advice Concerning Transitioning Careers, or On Becoming a 2nd Career Dev
- Other Technical Posts as topics arise
Written by Wesley L. Handy who lives and works in Virginia Beach, VA, finding ways to build cool stuff in Gatsby and React. You should follow him on Twitter